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why not put the burden of proof on the owner.

In the U. S., I'm innocent until proven guilty: prove it was me. No, I'm not telling you who was driving, because my lawyer said something something 5th amendment. But that's the theory, as this not-a-lawyer understands it. In practice, you'll just pay the ticket because the future of civil rights law does not rest on determining who was driving the car that day, and you know it was you anyway.

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> I'm innocent until proven guilty: prove it was me.

This is trivially circumvented via "attach fine to car" and "driving in a car with fine attached is illegal." (AFAIK that's how it works in Ukraine).

End result is the same.

The argument is not that a photo-enforcement mechanism couldn't be structured to abide by US law. The issue is that, thus far, the only attempts have run afoul of foundational elements of our legal structure because the towns/counties who have tried have tied the photo-enforcement tickets to the existing criminal statutes about driving.

If it were a civil infraction, with no license points, they'd have a better standing, but nobody has bothered to take that path.

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